


Did Someone Say 'Paint War'?

by Starkken



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Pre-Slash, Pride Flags, grimmichi pride week 2020, its obvious they'll get together tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:33:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24616099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starkken/pseuds/Starkken
Summary: “You’re going to help me paint this banner-” Grimmjow opened his mouth to protest, “-WITHOUT complaining or killing anyone. And when we’re done, maybe, and I meanmaybeI’ll fight you. You agreed to help as soon as you got in my car so shut up and get to work.”
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 5
Kudos: 92
Collections: GrimmIchi_Pride_Week_2020





	Did Someone Say 'Paint War'?

Ichigo slammed the door to his car and released a roar of anger. His keys nearly crunched in his hand from the force of his grip. 

Harsh stomps led him into the paint store and down the aisle with the brightest outdoor paint selection. It took him less than a minute to pick out the three brushes, two paint buckets, and one paint can. Then he took them to the checkout. The red haze in front of his eyes did not fall away at all during the process. He ripped the receipt from the machine and crumpled it in his pocket.

Barely a step from his 2006 Nissan Maxima, he heard someone behind him. 

“Kurosaki! Just who I was looking fo-”

“I am SO not in the mood to hold back right now. So unless you want to see what the inside of your ass looks like, just walk away,” Ichigo said through clenched teeth. The air he breathed out was practically scorching.

Silence. Ichigo thought the man had walked away. Just as he was taking a settling breath, a hand landed on his shoulder and tugged. The human spun on his heel and swung one of the five gallon paint buckets where he approximated a head to be.

Aluminum met bone and a horrible thunk was heard across the parking area. 

For a moment, all was calm. Then, claws dug into Ichigo’s neck and fingers pressed his airway closed. 

“What the FUCK Kurosaki?” Grimmjow yelled. The bone plated jaws on his right side looked slightly crooked and blood leaked from that edge of his mouth. He tightened his grip more as Ichigo only glared and sucked in breath harder. “I come all this way to fight you and you can’t even give a proper heads up before attacking?”

“F-fuck yo-you,” Ichigo ground out.

“Pathetic.” Grimmjow dropped his hand and wiped his mouth on the back of it. He worked his jaw and glared at the soul reaper again. “You broke one of my teeth. The hell is wrong with you?”

Ichigo snarled, “I said I wasn’t going to hold back. And I still won’t. If you don’t back off in the next second I _will_ kill you.”

The threat did not fall on deaf ears. Grimmjow stepped back and allowed Ichigo to get to his car. Still, the rath was new to the arrancar, and even as it scared him it made him excited. Ichigo Kurosaki never got that angry with him before.

“Shit. Is everything okay?” he questioned. As much as Grimmjow wanted to fight Ichigo, there was no way he would face off with him when he was so unsettled. 

Ichigo threw the paint buckets into his car and slammed the trunk shut. He didn’t respond to the ex-espada even as he got into his car.

Following a foolish impulse, Grimmjow opened the passenger door and hopped into the seat. He was very not used to sitting in a car and was uncomfortable as soon as the door closed.

Ichigo turned his head to the arrancar and stared at him with more ferocity than the man had shown to any of his enemies in Soul Society. He didn’t say anything, but Grimmjow heard the message loud and clear _”Get. Out.”_

“Nope. I’m staying. Wherever you’re going there’s gonna be a fight and I want to see you lose your shit,” Grimmjow said. His words were confident but inside he was screaming. Seeing his rival like this was making him so worked up he was going to either rip someone’s arms from their torso or cum in his pants. Maybe both.

Ichigo turned the key and the engine rolled over. His arm moved and Grimmjow prepared for a punch that was not coming. Without a word of warning, Ichigo backed the car out of its spot and harshly braked before throwing it into Drive and racing down the road. 

A warning light flashed on the dashboard, a red picture of someone in a seat with a belt across their chest. After a few seconds of the light being ignored, beeping started. It was a grating sound that seemed to get louder the longer it went on. 

Ichigo came to a stop at an intersection. Grimmjow reached for the door handle, wanting to get out and away from the blinking light and loud sound. The door was locked. A hand shoved his back against the chair. He was about to protest being treated that way when Ichigo reached across his chest and pulled a belt from beside his shoulder. Grimmjow held his arms up when Ichigo growled at him and nodded at the appendages. The belt stretched over his chest and the front of his waist and Ichigo rammed his hand next to Grimmjow’s right thigh. Something clicked and the beeping and flashing ceased.

The human returned his hand to the wheel and gripped it with white knuckles. Grimmjow tried his best to tame the blush that had worked its way across his skin from the close contact and rough handling. This new, angry Ichigo was pushing all his buttons in all the right ways.

The light turned green and they sped down the road, most likely violating the speed limit. Grimmjow clung to his arm rest and the handle by his head. Every time they approached another car on the road he thought his life would end. Death by Ichigo sounded a lot less cool when it wasn’t from a fight. Luckily, Ichigo was an expert driver and maneuvered between all obstacles on the road.

After 15 minutes of terrifying experience, the car rolled to a stop. They were at the Kurosaki Clinic. The only reason Grimmjow knew where they were was because of the sign in front of the store. Well, that and the gruff looking dark haired man waiting out front. His reiatsu had the same flavor as Ichigo’s.

The doors unlocked and Ichigo stepped out. He looked calmer but only as much as a tsunami calms down when it hits the coastline. Grimmjow scrambled out after him.

“Got everything we need, son?” the man asked. His voice was as rough as Grimmjow imagined it would be, probably because he also smelled like cigarettes. 

Ichigo mhmm-ed and grabbed the paint from the back. Wanting to make himself useful so as not to get sliced to bits by the two soul reapers, Grimmjow grabbed the brushes and followed his rival.

Ichigo’s father met them halfway and raised an eyebrow at the arrancar. Grimmjow shrugged and motioned to the still fuming orange-haired man. Compared to their interaction in the car park and the drive over, the old guy in front of Grimmjow seemed tame in power. The two met eyes and nodded.

“Thanks for coming to help. I’m Ichigo’s father, Isshin. With you pitching in you’ll be able to get this job done before dinner,” Isshin said cheerily. He offered his hand and Grimmjow shook it. Isshin’s grip was a bit too tight to ignore his strength. Grimmjow let go first.

“I only came to watch Ichigo tear someone apart,” said Grimmjow. He kept his eyes on Ichigo and observed the orange-haired man setting the buckets next to a large blank canvas taking up an entire parking spot. “What’d you need help with? I might stick around if it’s worth it.”

Ichigo cracked open the lid of the first bucket. Shimmering pink paint dropped from the lid onto the dark concrete. He pointed to Grimmjow and then the space next to the bucket. The signal was understood: _You. Here. Now._ Once again Grimmjow felt himself get excited, after all it wasn’t every day his rival directed him to do things. 

Grimmjow complied easily. 

“You’re going to help me paint this banner-” Grimmjow opened his mouth to protest, “-WITHOUT complaining or killing anyone. And when we’re done, maybe, and I mean _maybe_ I’ll fight you. You agreed to help as soon as you got in my car so shut up and get to work.”

Grimmjow swallowed hard. He liked Ichigo telling him what to do. And he liked getting to fight Ichigo. He would agree to anything the human/soul reaper wanted as long as he had those two things.

“What do I do?”

Ichigo poured a stripe of pink across the canvas then turned back to the arrancar. “You use _this_ -” he lifted Grimmjow’s hand to show the paint brush clutched in it, “-to spread the paint halfway across the white space.” 

The ex-espada understood. He pulled his arm from Ichigo’s hold and kneeled on the concrete by the canvas. Carefully dipping the brush into the color, he pulled the paint to the edge of the canvas. A glance at Ichigo said he was doing it right, so he carried on with his task.

To the side, Grimmjow heard Isshin chuckle. He knew what it was about but he could do nothing to stop the noises. 

“You’ve got him trained well, Ichigo.”

“Stuff it, old man.”

Ichigo popped another bucket open, this time the paint was blue. Grimmjow briefly wondered how strong Ichigo had to be to carry huge buckets of paint and pry the tops off with just his fingers without breaking a sweat. Probably strong enough to hold an adult. Definitely strong enough to hold an adult up against a wall and-

It was better for his focus to not be on that topic.

Blue paint splashed onto the canvas and Ichigo kneeled across from Grimmjow. He brushed jagged strokes across it, splattering paint onto himself from the force. 

The ginger quickly caught up to Grimmjow’s progress and started to surpass him. Not to be outdone, Grimmjow stabbed his brush into the paint and flung color across his space. He would be the first to completely cover his side. Ichigo huffed and worked faster, getting more blue and some purple on his clothes. Grimmjow matched pace and soon the two were having a war of speed and color. 

They only stopped when they ran out of canvas. And when they were covered in a mixture of pink, lavender, and blue.

Grimmjow was prepared to fling a dripping brush of pink at his rival when the other man suddenly burst out laughing. It was such a change in mood that Grimmjow dropped his ‘weapon’.

“Are, are you okay?” the arrancar asked.

Ichigo laughed harder, tears forming in his eyes. He held his stomach and folded over. Grimmjow wasn’t sure whether to touch the man or call for help.

When the laughter died down, Ichigo straightened his back and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Thank you, Grimmjow. I really needed that laugh after the shit I went through today.”

“Yeah, sure. Uh, if you want to you can tell me what happened…” Grimmjow said. He didn’t feel completely sure of where he stood with Ichigo after that outburst. They probably weren’t enemies. Were they… friends?

Sighing, Ichigo sat back and put his weight on his hands. “I got in a fight.”

Grimmjow motioned for him to explain further.

“Ahhh, well, since today is the first day of June and I was wearing my Pride shirt. Someone saw me and started making homophobic and biphobic comments. I told him to fuck off but he followed me back here,” Ichigo paused and took a calming breath, “So I punched him in the gut and flipped him on his head. Lucky for him we were near a clinic.”

Grimmjow howled, “I didn’t think you’d do that to someone, Kurosaki.”

“I didn’t mean to get that violent, he just really ticked me off! And call me Ichigo, please,” he justified. The blush across his face could have been from residual anger, but Grimmjow knew it was not. For some reason that made him feel happy.

“Alright Ichigo,” Grimmjow said, enunciating every syllable of the name, “But uhh why would you wear a Pride shirt?”

Ichigo’s eyes scrunched together and his head cocked sideways. “Because I’m bi? I like men and women and anybody in between? It’s Pride month which means celebration of gay people like me??”

“Isn’t everyone like that though?”

Stunned silence floated between the two. “Grimmjow, are you bi, too?”

The man in question shrugged. “I guess. I didn’t know there was another way to be.”

Ichigo’s jaw dropped. Grimmjow didn’t understand what the big deal was. Everybody was attractive in their own way, some people were more appealing to him, it didn’t matter what way they presented themselves. If a guy was hot then he was hot. No big deal. If someone had a problem with that then he would gladly punch them where the sun doesn't shine. But that was probably what had made Ichigo so angry in his earlier confrontationl. So maybe he could understand. 

Something touched Grimmjow’s pink covered hand and he looked down to see it was Ichigo’s blue palm. 

“Welcome to the community.” The ginger looked almost fondly at him. Butterflies suddenly swarmed in his stomach.

Isshin chose that moment to walk over to the pair. 

“Looks like it’s done! Great work. Although it does seem like you put more paint on each other than the banner…” the older man trailed off. 

Grimmjow and Ichigo looked down at the space between each other. The banner was covered in paint with just the right proportions. The top was pink and bottom blue and where they met was a thin stripe of purple.

Ichigo chuckled and stood up. He cracked open the last paint to reveal a deep black paint darker than the sky in Hueco Mundo. Grimmjow backed away from the canvas for fear of another paint war.

In a few quick strokes, Ichigo finished off his work. He pulled back to observe it and nodded approvingly. Grimmjow walked around to his “rival’s” side and read the words on the bottom of the banner:

“‘Fuck Off Biphobes!’” he paused a moment, considering, then said, “That’s perfect.”

All three men agreed.


End file.
